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 Jumped Up to Womanhood
Early marriage is still very prevalent in Andhra Pradesh
A small road curves between two villages. The afternoons are quiet here. The heat and humidity combine to create a sense of lethargy. Only the flies buzz busily on the backs of hands. On one side of the road is a sprawl of mud houses and this is where the fifty or so Scheduled Caste families of Avirupudi village live. Time moves slowly here, even more so for the women, most of whom are married off at very early ages.
Lalitha Kumari is around fifty. She has seen a lot of life, possibly more than she would have liked to. She got married at 11 and by the time she turned 12, she had already ‘been blessed’ with a boy. “Within five years, I had three children,” she says. “I still have health problems because of early pregnancies and childbirth.” Ironically, this has not served as a deterrent for some of the women who had daughters.
Veeramma has five daughters and three of them were married off by the time they turned twelve. Daughters are viewed as a responsibility, often a burden, and familes are motivated by the desire to ‘finish their work’ and be done with it. “We are labourers and don’t have money to save for them,” she says with a shrug. “We want to get rid of our responsibilities.” Marriage is viewed as security and it is assumed that the husbands will take care of the girls. Often, the girls are given in maariage to men who are much older (in their twenties) and capable of earning. Soon after they get married, girls have children. The effects on reproductive health are far-reaching and potentially dangerous.
The other trend prevalent among the community is to marry girls to relations or members of the extended family, especially maternal uncles. “There was no money to give dowry so I married them to my brothers,” Veeramma informs. When asked whether she realizes the possible health repercussions of such an arrangement, she demurs. “I had so many difficulties at the time so I did this. Now I realize that it is not right. I am not going to marry my other two daughters early.”
The winds of change? Perhaps. Veeramma’s fifth daughter has completed her graduation, which seems to bode well. But rather disconcertingly, she says: “I had no more brothers so she continued studying.”
On amore sober note, she adds: “In our time we had so much work to do. There were no machines to help with the farm or house work. We had no time to think about our own education. But I’m happy that our daughters are getting this opportunity.”
Child marriage has been illegal in India since the passing of the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929. In this Act, the term child refers to a male younger than twenty-one, or a female younger than eighteen. Yet, many children are still married illegally at early ages.
According to the “National Plan of Action for Children 2005 published by the Department of Women and Child Development of India, child marriage should be completely abolished by 2010. Despite the relative success of this plan, effective monitoring of this law remains a huge challenge.
Impoverished parents often believe that child marriage will protect their daughters. In fact, however, it results in lost development opportunities, limited life options and poor health. Child marriage is a health issue as well as a human rights violation. Because it takes place almost exclusively within the context of poverty and gender inequality, it also has social, cultural and economic dimensions.1
1 UNFPA Child Marriage Fact Sheet (http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2005/presskit/factsheets/facts_child_marriage.htm); Retrieved on 14 July 2008.
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